When ABC News arrived in Utuado less than two weeks after the storm, residents had cobbled together a makeshift ladder to reach what was left of the bridge from the waterbed. Over the following weeks, a jerry-rigged shopping cart on a line became a lifeline for food and medicine.

Rossello, joined by a resident who'd been left stranded, christened the new bridge with a bottle of champange and called it a symbol of "the commitment and the resiliency of the people of Puerto Rico.”